THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Grey River Argus, 12 February 1929, Page 3

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

ANCIENT AND MODERN USAGE. The quality of the English language has been railed at so often by press correspondents and psuedo-purists that we are likely to forget the principle that language is a living growth, and that which was, still is, and will continue to bo when it is supported by a virile people, writes Frank H. Vixeteily in the Auckland Star. The phrase “It’s me” Las been carped at as of unrestrained quality, as if it had no right to existence. Here is a phrase that is generally prevalent in England —from which we are borrowing a very great deal these days. Men like Fielding, Richardson, anld Smollett used the objective without fear, and English writers of fiction have followed the example of them ever since. But even Fielding, Richardson and Smollett did not set the fashion, which is more than 400 years old. “I purpose firmly to shrive me (for myself) of my sins on the morrow, but I must content me with the bare statement. Before doing so I must learn when I can get me shelter for the night.” It is to such reflexive construction as the foregoing that we owe the use of me as a nominative—n?e now so well established that it has survived all efforts to correct it. Traced by Dr. Henry Bradley in the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles back to the year 1500. and used by such masters of English as Shakespeare. Jonson, Swift, Goldsmith, Dickens, Walter Besant, and a score more or less of other-*, “it’s me” is just as virile toklay as it was 400 years ago.

The phrase arose from the fact that.,; from the earliest times, there was in use in the language of Europe two sounds that served to indicate the per son speaking. Tn English they apnea* - as “T” and “me” the older form of “I” hc:n “Te ” Tn the vernacular of England ho*h forms nf the nhrase are u?ed. but “it is me” finds greater favour if one mav take literature ns indicating prevalence. Notwithstanding this fact, the grammarians arrayed thenvelvcs against it. Shakespeare bubbles over with the use of the objective when the nominative is required to-day. “A foolish knight, that’s me, T warrant you.” mav he found in “ Twelfth Night,” Act. TT, Scene 5. Tn the “Two GenSemen of Verona,” Launce, a character who is described as “the like to Proteus” one of the Gentlemen, and therefore not a boor, or a clown, says: “I am the dog—no the dog is himself anti I am the dog. Oh! The dog is me and I am myself.” 1 ‘ls she as tall as me?” occurs in ”Antony and Cleopatra,” Act TH, Scene 3. an I in “As You Like It” the Duke says, “And get you from our court.” Then of him the fair Rosalind neively inquires: “Mo, uncle?” Dean Swift once, overjoyed at the prospect of dining with a beautiful woman, whom he loved, bur, who had disappointed him, exclaimed: “An invitation to dine with her! Impossible’ It can’t be me!” But it v-as, for the fair one who had disappointed him relented later and graciously acceded, but Swift could not believe .His eyes.

Even Lord Byron declared: “Lord Delaware is considerably younger than me.” Considered etymologically, the correct for is “It is I,” and this is the way in which the phrase was used by Chaucer in “The Knighted Tale,” lines 14G3 and 1738: “Who could Hwe in English proprely his martirdoni? Forsooth it am not I.” “It am I that loveth .... Emelie the bright,”

Notwithstanding the fact that the grammarians have “thundered in the index” against it, and almost innumerable textbooks nave condemned <t the phrase “it’s me” still finds fav our with the English people and is condoned by English purist* as “such a lapse is of no importance,” there you are.

“It’s me” is as much ac. idiom as “Is that him?” or “That’s her” of Swinburne’s “Love’s Cross Currents.’ “That’s her, said Reggie,” and for good measure let me add an example of English as she it wrote from Trollope’s “The Duke’s Children”* “Oit only comfojt was that the Cirbott’e people were quite as badly off as us’’, or Rebessa Sharpe’s confidential communication concerning Sir Pitt Crawley’s comments on a tenant who found himself in the workhouse: “Him anil bis family has been cheating me on that farm these 150 years!” To which the astute Rebecca added: “Sir Pitt might have said ‘lie and bis family’ to be sure; but rich baronets dou’t need to be careful about grammar aJ pool governesses must be.” To Thaekaray “Is that him?” was merely questionable usage; to us it is an abominable error, yet Thackeray simply cast the shadow of the coming event, for the English themselves condone such a construction, and we find in Fowler’s Modern English Usige” an extract from a newspaper that reads: “It might have been him and not President Wilson who said the other dav that . . . .” Bat stand

on the street and watch a paralde with your ears wide open, and as the hero of the occasion approaches note the hail of recognition that rolls all along" the line— “That’s him!” Everybody does it, even those who know better. In an American paper is reference to a controversy which has raged in New York around the pronunciation of certain English words. The outspoken criticisms of Mr St. John Ervine, the well known British critic and playwright, now dramatic critic of the New York World, brought the matter to a head. “Will anyone tell me,” he says, “why a human being should say ‘yep’ when he means ‘yes,” and thus make a sound like a laughing hyena trying to talk, or why anyone should, say ‘yeah’ which sounds as if he started out to say ‘yes’ but lad suddenly contracted a violet pain in his stom ach. I hear this disgusting mixture of snarl and grunt wherever I go, and to my hoiror I discover that Englishmen after they have he?n in America for a while use it too. A fear fills my heart that presently I shall be saying it, too. Already my sentences, when I speak to my friends, begin

-.-.lth, ‘Say, lissun, I’m gcmnc tell you . omepin. ’ ’ New York, however, insists that ‘'yeah” has a meaning all its own, and a distinguished critic of the American language takes up the cudgels in its favour in the Sonning Tower: — With Mr St. John Etvine we deeply sympathise. When things like that get on your nerves thev ge~ <n you* nerves. But we do no’. ;,oin in his campaign to abolish :h.cse two words, fcr to as they are very pi-eeious, “Yeah” is »• part-of us, aid cne of the finest words we ever evolved. The trouble with Mr Ervine is that he naively supposes it means “Yes.” Actually it does not —or very seldom. When an American merely means ‘yes’ he does not say “yep,” “yeah,” or “yes.” lie says “sure.” But when he means something that would take many words to state explicitly, and thus needs a subtle word of flexible connotation to express his meaning briefly, he uses “yeah.” For example: “Well, I saw a horse jump over the Woolworth building to-day.” “Yeah.” /‘Now this,” concludes the writer, “doesn’t mean ‘yes.’ It meats ‘You’re a liar, but let’s tear the rest of it. anyhow.”